


innocence died screaming (honey, ask me, i should know)

by komet



Series: a study on harry hook [1]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Captain Hook's A+ Parenting, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Gun Violence, Harry Hook-centric, Minor Character Death, Minor Harry Hook/Uma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:08:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27724610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/komet/pseuds/komet
Summary: Harry was fifteen the first time he killed a man.
Series: a study on harry hook [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2027927
Kudos: 19





	innocence died screaming (honey, ask me, i should know)

Harry was fifteen the first time he killed a man.

The memory, although clear as day, has a dreamlike quality to it. Sometimes he physically jolts as he remembers that it really did happen, that he really did wipe a man’s blood off his face, and learn what it sounds like when a dead body hits the ground. They say that once a feeling passes it can never truly be recalled again, but Harry remembers every bit of it. 

**. . .**

The once-late Captain Hook is a tall, slender man who tends to peer down his nose with these dark eyes that glint like a blade. He stands with his boots planted surely on the gently swaying deck of a docked ship, looking proud in his long red coat and plumed hat. He is every inch the Captain that he boasts to be, and in spite of the Isle’s disgraceful circumstances, his crew is, generally speaking, the same well-oiled machine that it has always been, even with their hollowed cheeks and scornful eyes. 

He looms behind his son, a boy of fifteen showing the first signs of manhood. Harry has grown taller and broader, and his posture is a staunch, nearly-identical impression of his father’s: proud, confident, commanding. He looks for all the world like the Captain’s son that he is. His stomach, by contrast, is churning in harsher waves than the tide, and his heart is beating brutally against his chest. A dread of anxiety cleaves through him as he wonders irrationally if his father can tell. 

Around them, the crew is gathered in a tight, restless circle. They are a pack of hyenas waiting for the first blood.

“Mutiny!” Hook announces, voice ringing with dramatic presentation and cutting through the silence as a ship breaches the tide. “Mutiny is a tool of cowards and fools; and a _failed_ mutiny speaks to even greater volumes of shameless mediocrity.” His eyes flicker over the ring of waiting crewmates, who are quick to nod and offer their murmurs of assent. The Captain is always right, of course. “It is a disease, and a diseased limb must be cut off, must it not?” 

Again ripples the wave of hurried agreement. Faithful Smee’s voice rings out, “It must, Captain, of course it must!”

Heavenward, the sky is as grey and overcast as it always is. There’s a chill in the air, and in the midst of this rising clamor for violence, Harry thinks that that, of course, must be why he trembles ever so slightly. 

Satisfied, Hook makes a beckoning gesture over Harry’s shoulder. “Bring him forward.”

In front of them, the wall of bodies parts to admit two figures. One is a mountain of a man with a wild black beard obscuring the better part of his face, and under the force of his gargantuan hands, he guides forward a thrashing man bound at the wrists with a knot of rope. A dirty white cloth wraps round his mouth, swallowing his shouts of protest as he is ushered and jostled into the center of the circle, then shoved to his knees in front of the Captain and his son. 

Harry observes him with eyes like ice. His dark hair is an unruly, leonine mass of curls tied loosely back, and a freckled nose streams with dark blood. He can’t be but a few years older than Harry, and the son of Hook recalls vaguely that he’s a newer member of the crew. He looks like a caged animal like this, green eyes angry and alarmed as they meet Harry’s. Harry raises his chin just so. _I will not help you._

“Remember this day, men!” Hook calls, and Harry flinches minutely with the force of the voice at his back. “Treachery will not go unanswered!” His voice quivers slightly with demonstrative anger, and the crew mirrors it back to him. They call and jeer and snap at the boy at the center of their execution ring, who has gone still save for his heaving breaths. He looks almost calm, if not furious. Dignified, Harry realizes, and it makes his throat grow tight. 

As their men continue to shout and sneer, Hook accepts the loaded flintlock pistol presented piously to him by Smee. Harry, for the first time since this began, looks back at his father as the gun is offered to him in turn. Hook, peering down his nose with those glinting eyes, gives only a curt nod. _You know what to do._

The weapon is heavy in his hand, and a wave of determination crashes against the indomitable dread roaring through his tensed body. He turns back toward their traitor, clenching his jaw from side to side as he readies himself to take aim; however, before he even has the chance to raise his arm, the curve of a metal hook presses hard between his shoulder blades and pushes him forward, closer. He doesn’t stumble, exactly, but his heels drag against the wood and he blinks to get his bearings. 

He’s so close now that, when he raises the pistol, the tip of the barrel is mere inches from the face of the unfortunate soul on the wrong side of it. He’s so close that, when they meet eyes again, it startles Harry. His breathing has grown quick, slightly ragged. He realizes with absurd clarity that he is about to shoot a man dead — only, that sounds a bit too much like a firefight. This, for all purposes, is an execution. 

When Harry looks up, he realizes that the men have gone quiet again, and that the din he’s hearing is the sound of his own blood roaring in his ears. They’re all waiting, watching him expectantly, and despite the chill Harry feels a bead of sweat roll down the curve of his spine. He has no idea how long he’s been standing like this, arm extended and feet planted wide, but it must be a few seconds too long because he hears his father clear his throat deliberately behind him. 

He’s practiced firing this gun before. He knows what to do.

His focus narrows only to the line of the barrel, and the waiting face at the end of it. He can do this because he has to, because it will make his father proud. With his thumb, Harry cocks the pistol, and then his index finger finds its home on the trigger. There are those green eyes again. They aren’t asking for help anymore. 

It feels criminal, but for a brief moment, Harry wonders for the first time what this boy’s name is. He wonders if he has a mother who will weep tonight, arms wrapped round herself because she surely will not have her son’s body returned to her. He wonders what it will look like, feel like, if he will like doing it. His hand is not shaking, but the ice in his eyes cracks and he thinks he must look a shade desperate. _I cannot help you._

He’s taking too long again.

A few paces behind him, his father’s voice rings out, sharp and impatient. “Now!” he bellows, and it startles Harry so badly that reflexively, he jumps to pull the trigger.

This is what he knows about the moments that came immediately after: it’s the loudest sound he’s ever heard, blood sprays warm on his face, and the bullet blows open the boy’s skull with such force that it leaves behind only a mangled chasm of red, sending his limp body careening backward like a felled tree. It hits the deck with a wet, hollow thud. 

( This is what he knows about himself in the months and years after: he has never been quite right since; he still remembers the taste of someone else’s blood in his mouth; and something deep inside him met a violent demise the moment he pulled the trigger. He’s never been innocent, has never really known its face, but the very idea of it was desecrated so foully on this day that the word has lost all meaning. )

Around him, the crew is cheering. Harry hasn’t moved an inch, just stares at the gnarled mess of brain matter and splintered bone where a face used to be. There is something in his head imploring him to understand that he has just obliterated another human from existence, but he doesn’t think it works. He can’t feel it. He can’t feel anything.

It’s not even been a minute, but he only realizes his arm is still up when Smee slips into his line of sight to relieve him of the smoking pistol. Some of the men come forward to seize the crumpled body, dragging it toward the edge of the ship where it will be pitched overboard. In a moment of dazed detachment, Harry wonders, _Why did I do this?_

Finally, his arm falls and he twists on his heel to look back at his father, searching. _I did this for you. You made me do this._

For the first time that Harry can remember until now, Hook smiles at him, and his eyes are cold but there’s something like pride there. The Captain nods again, only this time it’s reverent, satisfied. _Well done_. 

It feels like sacrilege, the way that Harry’s chest swells with excitement in response.

**. . .**

By the time he finishes telling this morbid tale to Uma, she’s looking at him in a way he can’t quite understand. He recognizes the anger in the tight line of her jaw, the curl of her lip; it’s a look that she wears loudly, and often, powerful rage coiled like a serpent. This, he sees. What he does not understand is the tenderness alongside it. There’s a certain softness warring against the venom in her eyes, and he doesn’t know what to make of it.

She had asked this of him. Sitting up in the crow’s nest, they are alone on the _Lost Revenge_ looking out at the moon-dappled sea; at Auradon, brightly lit across the waves. They do this sometimes, talk into the late hours of the night, shielded from all the rest of the world. Most often, they speak of all the things they’ll do once they are off this island. They speak of revenge, yes, but also what comes after. They each have enough ideas to fill a lifetime, but the one thing they always agree on is this: they will be happy, and they will be together. 

Some nights, they simply wonder what the stars look like, or what it must feel like to go to sleep each night without trembling with cold or hunger. Tonight, however, they spoke of death. Uma had asked him not if he’d ever killed a man, for she knows the answer (he has, after all, killed at her behest before), but about the first time he’d done so. 

_She asked,_ he reminds himself again. So why is she looking at him like that? 

After a moment of quiet, Uma asks if he knows how old his father was, the first time he took a life. Harry, although puzzled, answers yes; he was seventeen. At this, she nods slowly, looking away from him and back to the sea. She says nothing more, and it takes him a second to understand. When he does, he finds himself staring at his hook for a long moment. 

That’s what a legacy is, he supposes, at least in the eyes of Captain Hook. What he wanted out of his son, above all else, was a boy strong, cunning, and ruthless enough to follow diligently in his footsteps and even further than that. He wanted Harry to be crueler and more clever than even he was, and so he took every opportunity to set his son on this warpath. He introduced him to blood and death early and with unflinching brutality. 

In the wake of this, perhaps Harry should feel resentment, or guilt, or anger. He doesn’t. What’s done is done, and a part of him is even grateful for it. This is what it takes to be wicked and evil and cruel, and he will never forget it. 

“What did it feel like?” she asks him eventually, and there’s a particular weariness to her voice. He remembers quietly that she has never taken a life with her own hands. 

Harry thinks about that, recalling the weight of the gun in his hand and the chill in the air and the blood on the deck. To this day, he’s never seen so much blood, and he wonders what exactly that means. He wonders if he’ll ever forget what it felt like, because he remembers that yawning chasm and thinks that it never really closed again. 

It didn’t feel like anything at all, he wants to say.

“It felt like power,” he decides finally, and they fall silent for a long while after. 

**END.**

**Author's Note:**

> i've been writing a lot of sad harry so i'll work on something where he's more in his element lol. i have a swordfight in the drafts.  
> i live on comments!


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